This is just a idea that struck me when i was seeing the rates of premium membership which ended on 120$ a year and i thought to me if there was one more option for a lifetime premium membership. Most of the services like innternet connection have unlimited thing and a fixed cost for no matter how much you use it. So it can be implemented to have a lifetime membership that may not be lifetime for like 3 or more years. Whats your thoughts. EDIT : I am going to go premium so it struck me.
..then you'll be banned. By following the rules you shouldn't worry about that -- and I do think that most premium members have read the rules at least a dozen times
I think maybe it's a nice idea, and could most likely work, yeah. But the price should be about $200-$250 for the permanent/lifetime membership.
I don't think this is a good idea... Even your internet connection is unlimited but for just one month and you pay the bills monthly. Here also you can get unlimited or all features of Premium member in just $25.
There is no ISP in the WORLD, that offer's "unlimited plan's" like you pay $200 and get "lifetime" internet. thats impossible.
There's a cost incurred by the ISP to keep you connected, but there isn't really a cost involved to maintain your premium membership..
Not individually, but there is as a whole... the same could be said for Internet service. It doesn't cost them much of anything for a single Internet subscriber when you don't factor in equipment and expenses of the ISP. Same for premium members here... While there's not much of a cost for a single subscriber, there are actual direct expenses (for example the monthly bandwidth (it's not a million dollars a month or anything, but it is 4-figures/month). There's a lot of one-time hardware costs (2 months ago we put $20,000 worth of new equipment into the data center). As far as building new stuff for the site, it certainly doesn't code itself. Premium membership was never intended to be for everyone (or even the bulk of users)... it's not really a premium/special thing if most people have it. I also don't treat it as a "donation". If people aren't getting value from premium membership that is greater than the cost, they shouldn't get it.
I am not saying i use a connection that gives lifetime internet connection for an upfront payment. There is a plan where you can use unlimited internet for a month for some specific amount. As i said that it that it may not be necessary to make it lifetime, it can be 3 years and given the term lifetime or since giving premium membership to someone does not cost anything to the admin they may make it lifetime too.
The current premium membership already works like your unlimited Internet example. You pay for the period of time, and you can use it unlimited.
I think the current system is quite good . If a user really wants a lifetime membership there could be a option to buy it for 100 years (the brain doesn't live more then that under normal conditions AFAIK) . OFC this membership could come whit a lot of goodies . Given the fact that it would cost as much as a car I think i could justify it's price . And speaking of the price i suppose it will far larger then normal due to the fact that it will need to compensate for inflation .
The price for 1-year membership is $125 (recurring). How many of us would buy more than 1 year, just because you'll get an extra $25-$50 discount? Maybe 1% of all current premium members? Not worth the effort IMO. I'm even wondering the percentages of people that have premium membership -- in terms of XX% bought premium membership for 6 months recurring etc. Just to see how many bought it for one year in advance compared to people that bought it for 3 months.
I don't know about the other members but i like to do things long term and whit no commitment . I got the premium stuff for 1 year no recurring . Maybe a 10 year subscription offer would be something i would buy . The price doesn't have to be lower but I'd like some extra perks like more sig links , a different badge or the ability to deleted expired infractions . However a there would be only a small amount of people that would buy this but nevertheless there is potential for a nice profit .
Lol, reminds me of a hosting sold by nick on DP few years ago, 12$ one off payment for unlimited hosting, ran away after a month with countless angry customers
That would probably be around $1,000. Would you really pay such a great amount when you're unsure about your future? You might get out of internet business etc. And since you can currently have 6 signature links I don't think Shawn would add even more I see the point you're making, but I don't see it happen due to lack of interest of most people